Good morning. It's the first Monday in October and that means a new Supreme Court session begins today. As NPR's Nina Totenberg reported on Morning Edition, the issues on the court's docket include gun rights, the separation of church and state and the tension between efforts to regulate campaign finance and the First Amendment:

For an interactive look at the major cases in the new term, click here.

Meanwhile, among the stories making headlines are:

— NPR News — "Three Americans Share Nobel Medicine Prize": "Three American scientists who made key discoveries about how living cells age have received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The winners are Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; and Jack Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston." The news of their honor was announced this morning in Stockholm. NPR's Jon Hamilton also filed this audio report:

— The Associated Press — Suicide Bomber Kills 5 At U.N. Office In Islamabad: "A suicide bomber disguised as a security officer struck the lobby of the U.N. food agency's Pakistan headquarters Monday, killing five people a day after the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban vowed fresh assaults, authorities and witnesses said."

— The New York Times — "Attacks On Remote Posts Highlight Afghan Risks": " Insurgents attacked a pair of remote American military bases in Afghanistan over the weekend in a deadly battle that underscored the vulnerability of the kind of isolated bases that the top American commander there wants to scale back."

Related story by The Washington Post — Gen. McChrystal "Faulted On Troop Statements": "National security adviser James L. Jones suggested Sunday that the public campaign being conducted by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan on behalf of his war strategy is complicating the internal White House review underway, saying that "it is better for military advice to come up through the chain of command."

— BBC News — "Search Ends For Sumatra Survivors": "Officials in the earthquake-hit city of Padang, Indonesia, have called off the search for survivors in the rubble of buildings five days after the disaster. The focus has turned to bringing aid and medical help to survivors in the city and the surrounding areas. At least 1,000 people have died and at least 1,000 remain missing after the earthquake struck last Wednesday."

Click here at noon ET for an online chat, hosted by the NPR Health Blog, with NPR's Richard Knox and Dr. Richard Wenzel, professor and chair of internal medicine at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond.